As if search engine optimization of text wasn’t enough to figure out and do well, now a smart business needs to be embracing DAO - that is, Digital Asset Optimization (or DAM as it’s also known: Digital Asset Management)… quite simply, SEO for digital media:
- V-SEO: videos are optimized by the use of title tags, having each video on its own web page, uploading the video to YouTube and other free video-share sites. Google is increasingly favoring videos in its search results.
- Image Optimization: using alt-tags for all images (photos, vector files) on your web pages. Plus including them in photo-sharing sites such as Flickr.
- Sound File optimization: similar strategies; getting ranked and linked through iTunes and places like Podcast Alley.
- Document optimization: same best practices around tagging, plus using services such as Scribd, a document-sharing site and SlideShare for sharing Powerpoint presentations.
OK, I don’t want to overload you… just want to introduce a whole new, exciting world of getting your word out - and not limiting it just to standard text.
SEO just keeps getting more and more interesting (not to mention more lucrative; more ways to optimize your online presence means more ways to bill! 
Blended search (aka “universal search“) means that the search engines take video, photos and news items and throws them into the mix alongside traditional text sites when ranking organic results. Better for the searcher? Possibly. But what about for businesses?
At the Search Engine Strategies Toronto conference a couple of weeks ago, the marketing manager of a multinational corporation sat on a B2B panel discussing SEO/SEM tactics. Jim Beretta happily reported that ATS Automation Tooling Systems does very well in its page rankings in Google thanks to his SEO diligence.
But Beretta doesn’t like what he sees happening of late with Blended Search. “It’s pushing us downpage,” he complains of his organic page rankings appearing beneath videos and images he doesn’t consider related.
Prank video outranks global brand leader
For example, one week, Google chose a YouTube video of some college guy’s “MIT Dorm Automation System Party Mode Activation” as more search-worthy than ATS, a corporation that has made more than more than 10,000 automation systems and employs 3,500 people at two dozen locations across three continents!
C’mon, Google… really!
(The top-of-page one ranking really served the MIT kid well: his homemade, 47-second video has garnered more than 642,000 views to date!)
Serving up Google’s favorite desserts
It doesn’t escape Beretta’s attention that it was a YouTube result that Google favored for the automation” term - and that YouTube is owned by Google.
“We have to watch what Google channels are opening up, and offer something to those,” he says. “We need to help Google serve up their favorite desserts.”
Now there’s a slice of reality pie in the new world of blended search.
